We talked about benches on Sunday
Handsome Hubby and I are bench heads. We like to sit on benches, and have favorites around the world. We refer to each one of them affectionatley as “Benchie.”
Atlantis Benchie
In my not-so-distant past, I lived at my job on a yacht, wherever the yacht went. On and off, over the course of years, we spent a lot of time in the marina at Atlantis resort in the Bahamas. The restaurants there are overpriced crap, so guests almost always ate on board. At the end of a long day of cooking, after I finished dinner service and cleaned the galley, Handsome Husband poured us big cups of wine while I threw a hoodie over my uniform. We’d step out into the world and make a beeline for Benchie. In this case, Benchie was at the entrance to the casino. The entire resort was designed around the casino as a thoroughfare, so if you wanted to go anywhere in the resort, you had to pass through the casino.
The casino is guarded by “Crystal Gate,” a 30,000 pound crystal sculpture that looks like frozen spurts of water geysering into the air. You can walk around it on all sides. While there are at least a dozen benches in the foyer surrounding the sculpture, one of them is perfect. You can survey the world from that perch. OK, maybe not the whole world, but close to it, everyone coming to see and photograph the sculpture as well as everyone going into the casino and also, inside the casino. It’s a marvelous parade of humanity from all over the world: families, gamblers, partiers, the wealthy, the average working guy, spring breakers, reluctant teen children whose parents demand they smile for a photo in front of the sculpture but they don’t smile, influencers aiming for the perfect shot, women wearing bikinis playing the slots, fighting couples…
One added bonus of this Benchie is that the wall behind her is mirrored, so as people walk by, they turn to inspect themselves and never notice us. This is a people-watcher's dream.
Exhausted but entertained, Handsome Hubby and I didn’t have talk about our day or even speak, we sipped our cup wine while watching the world go by.
There are a few other choice benches in Atlantis’ Marina Village that we also love, but the OG Atlantis Benchie is our fave.
Murder Bench
I cannot state with certainty that a murder actually occurred on the “murder bench.” It looked so, and that’s enough for us.
My friends and I were out for an early morning walk in the park near my house. It’s generally pretty sedate at that time of day: locals walking their dogs or running, maybe an exercise group, tourists sipping coffee by the fountain, and people on their way to work or class. How shocked were we to come across a bench covered in an abundance of red biological sludge? A generous amount of freshly dried blood had seeped into the woodgrain; more curiously, however, shiny bright crimson viscous goop formed large pools and splatters on and around the bench.
One of my walking companions is a medical professional who was on her day off from treating patients. She could not readily identify the bright shiny goo.
We played detective, trying to figure out what we were looking at and how it got there. Why was there some dry and some thick sloppy wet? Why such a big splotch and smaller smears? There were no bloody footprints or handprints, no marks, no trash or detritus of any kind around the bench aside from the puddles of slop. Did someone fall? How did they get there? How did they leave? Are they ok? Are they alive? Was there violence involved? It was way too much bio-gunk to have come from a squirrel or even a large dog.
Relax, we touched nothing.
Instead, like the good girls we are, we found the maintenance crew cleaning another part of the park and reported what we saw. By the time we passed it on our next lap, the area had been taped off and blocked by a city truck.
Later that morning, the bench and the adjacent sidewalk squares had been power washed. The area looked fresh and bright, the wood on the bench like new, with zero evidence of the bloody mess we’d seen.
That spot stands out among the benches and sidewalks around it because of that cleaning. Years on, you can still see the difference where those few sidewalk squares and the bench are less weathered than everything around it.
We never found out what happened, but murder bench lives on to this day.
The UK is very generous with its benches.
If there is a seafront, there are benches. In the cities of Brighton and Hove, south of London, hundreds of benches line the promenade that stretches for a couple miles along the shore. Most of the benches have been dedicated to loved ones. It isn’t unusual to see a bench festooned with ribbons or balloons to commemorate the birthday of that bench's honoree or even see the party taking place.
England and Wales boast 140,000 miles of public footpaths. These are protected rights-of-way on private land for public use. These paths represent routes will not be compromised, routes that humans have been walking upon for centuries. Some of these paths are less than a foot wide, running diagonally across a field, some take you between houses in a village. Farmers plant around the foot paths, their land accessed by styles and gates. Not all farmers love this, there may be a bull among the cows (pro-tip: play it cool until you can’t, then run like hell). They may obscure the pathway with overgrowth or flat out lock their gates, but this is rare and perpetuated by the kind of grouchy assholes who are usually uncovered as the villain on Scooby Doo. It is incumbent upon those walking the paths to close and gates behind them (AKA: don’t be a douche).
As an American, the first time I encountered these footpaths, I couldn’t wrap my head around how we could just be walking along the fence on some random property, past a bunch of sheep who didn’t care about us, and then just walk onto another farm. No one was going to kick us out or threaten to shoot us?
It’s not uncommon to come across a rudimentary hand-made bench in what feels like the middle of nowhere. It feels compulsory to me to stop and take in the world from that vantage point when a bench pops up in these travels.
In May of 2022, I walked this path, sat on this bench, and listened to this joy…
What are you bench stories?
I live in Michigan and often walk along Lake Huron, where there are dedicated benches. I always wonder about the stories behind the names…. Many mention that the person enjoyed that view, others will mention hobbies, like traveling or boating… 🛶. ( I also enjoy reading the words on gravestones… some are quite touching or even funny… ). Thanks for an interesting story…
I think a fun thing would be to donate several benches along a trail and put parts of a long-running joke on each one, with a punchline at the end. But one that would work either way you were travelling. It would be a challenge but ultimately worth it